Verizon's Market Share

by Editor
August 30, 2013 at 8:46 am

http://www.smartertimes.com/986/verizon-market-share

An article on the front of the business section of today's New York Times begins, "With a majority of Americans using Verizon Wireless for their cellphone service, it may not seem obvious that almost half of Verizon is owned by a company overseas."

It is not accurate that "a majority of Americans" use Verizon wireless for their cellphone service.

This Venturebeat article from July 2013 puts Verizon Wireless's market share at 30 percent, with 98 million connections, behind AT&T with 107 million.

The Verizon Wireless web site says "As the nation's largest wireless company, we serve 100.1 million retail connections." ATT's annual report says "We increased our total wireless subscriber base to 107 million." If you add in Sprint, T-Mobile, and the various other small fry, there's no way that Verizon serves a majority of cellphone customers, let alone a majority of Americans. Maybe what the Times meant to say is that Verizon wireless serves a plurality of Americans, or that it is slightly beating AT&T these days, but that is not what the sentence in the newspaper says. A correction is warranted.

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